Julius Zebra: Grapple with the Greeks!

Gary Northfield's Julius Zebra: Grapple with the Greeks is a daft Greek-myth romp for 8 year olds about a zebra who gets talked into a quest by a show-off demi-god.

What happens

A huge, muscly stranger turns up at the lake and starts chucking Julius's friends through the air. He's Heracles, son of Zeus (Julius calls him Hairy Keith), and he needs heroes to help him finish one of his famous labours.

Julius isn't interested. Then Heracles mentions the reward is living for ever, and suddenly he's VERY interested.

So off they go. Cornelius the warthog, who knows a fact about everything. Lucia the crocodile. Milus the grumpy lion, who keeps threatening to eat somebody. Felix the antelope and his rock collection. And Julius's brother Brutus, who won't take off his seaweed wig.

The job sounds easy. They just have to find an apple. A golden apple, lost somewhere in a gigantic maze on Crete. Heracles swears there are no monsters. Cornelius knows exactly what lives in a maze on Crete (and he's not happy about it).

It's so silly. Julius throws his stone backwards in Heracles's hero test. He reads the map upside down for hours. And he just cannot say Hesperides. Hairy Spiders? Hairyspuddies? Your reader will probably be getting it wrong on purpose for weeks!

There's a proper bit of Greek myth hiding under the jokes, too. A giant metal man guards the coast of Crete, there's a very smelly lair deep inside the maze, and a ball of string turns out to matter a lot. A child who knows the old stories will feel very clever spotting them.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The maze is littered with bones (the gang call them skellybobs), and Cornelius explains that Hades is where you go when you're dead. It's all played for laughs, though, and Julius is far more likely to shriek than get hurt.

This is the fourth book about Julius, so if your reader hasn't met the gang yet, it's best to start at the beginning with Rumble with the Romans.

What to read next

If it's the Greek myths that get them giggling, Icarus Was Ridiculous is Izzy's very dramatic retelling, starting with a teenage boy who won't listen to his dad and a horrible king with a maze under his tower.